Colucci: Russia’s foreign policy working better than Obama’s

Lamont Colucci, associate professor and chair of the politics and government department, recently published an opinion piece for U.S. News & World Report. In “Russia Keeps Winning,” Colucci writes that Russian foreign policy is putting America’s to shame.
He writes that if anything can characterize the Obama foreign policy, it would be the phrase “the Grand Retreat.” It is often illustrated by propagandizing to the American electorate that it faces only two choices in any given foreign policy situation, both of which lack good outcomes for the United States; one is then characterized as better than the other.”

This was the case in the Iran deal, he writes.

President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has outmaneuvered Obama’s administration five times, he says. “It is a hard pill to swallow when one has to admit that Russian ‘diplomacy’ is more skilled than America’s,” Colucci writes. “On the other hand, this is hardly a mystery: Russian and Soviet foreign policy was always controlled by cold-eyed realists who see lives as statistics, time as a temporary impediment and boundaries as interim fictions.”

He says Russia has been successful for two basic reasons: Russia’s foreign policy is based on a cold calculation of Russian national interests abroad; and Russia has clear goals of where it wants to be at the end of these diplomatic exercises.”

“It is time the Obama administration matches the bear and goes on the offensive to a victory that represents not only what is best for the United States, but the civilians of the entire region who are the real victims of this Russian-Iranian chess game,” Colucci concludes.

The full article can be read here.